The Kirby Archive of British woodland studies

The Kirby Archive comprises studies of British woodland change derived from a career as woodland ecologist with first the Nature Conservancy Council (joined 1979), its successor bodies (English Nature, Natural England). This work continued after retirement (2012), under the guise of visiting researcher in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford. While key results have been published as formal papers, these files provide fuller accounts of some of the studies involved and the original data. The archive includes results from long-term studies established in the 1970s by Colyear Dawkins of the Commonwealth Forestry Institute in Oxford at Wytham Woods and the Warburg Reserve (Bix Bottom); resurveys of forestry plantations first examined in the 1980s and resurveyed in the 2010s; and studies of managed and unmanaged stands at a variety of other sites. Also included are additional files relating to woodland survey, monitoring and classification techniques that provide some context for the methods used. The reports have been prepared in Microsoft Word, while the data are presented in Word, Excel CSV, and PDF formats. I would like to acknowledge the inspiration of Colyear Dawkins of the Commonwealth Forestry Institute and George Peterken of the Nature Conservancy Council, who set me along this road of study; the assistance of innumerable companions, as we slogged through the brambles; and the willingness of woodland owners to allow us to work in their woods. Studies of long-term change in British woodland in response to various local and national drivers of change: forest growth, management, disease, eutrophication. An additional round of analysis from 2018 was added in January 2021 and can be found in the zip file 'Wytham 2018 data'